cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/27970929
Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be “appropriate.”
Below is a message from owner of the server.
Free Speech Under Attack
Dear friends, I don’t often post announcements of this sort, but I feel it’s very important for you all to know what’s currently going on.
From the very start, over 15 years ago, one of the key founding principles of MinecraftOnline has been free speech. What started out as an uncontroversal, common sense policy, has proved to be a cornerstone of this increasingly unique community. As time has passed and Western society has wavered back and forth in its political leanings, free speech has repeatedly come under attack for political reasons. It has now become common to see arrests for posts on social media in countries such as Britain and Germany, in the name of political control, which have overtaken the numbers even of traditionally totalitarian countries such as China and Russia - a truly dystopian nightmare for freedom of expression and personal liberty.
Throughout this decade and a half of change, MinecraftOnline has held steadfast to its libertarian principles, and remained an oasis of freedom and openness in an increasingly closed and controlled internet. That is, until now.
Microsoft, through their subsidiary Mojang, have issued an ultimatum to MinecraftOnline. We have been told to do away with our free speech policy (which long pre-dates Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang), within 7 days, or face a a permanent block. If that happens, nobody will be able to play on MinecraftOnline again, and the 15-year history of this beloved server will come to a sudden and bitter end. The full email we have received today, signed facelessly only as “Mojang Enforcement”, is included below.
The email makes extremely vague claims about “harmful interactions” and “harmful comments”, and we are asking Microsoft to clarify what specific interactions and comments they consider harmful. In the meantime, please spread the word, share this info on social media. Defend free speech.
-SlowRiot
good question!
i think it might have to do with Intellectual Property law:
since the discord server, presumably, uses the name “MinecraftOnline”, that means they are using Mojang’s trademarked name.
which means Mojang can probably take legal action, if they feel like the conduct surrounding either the discord or the Minecraft server is damaging their reputation.
and i think that’s not even necessary, since i doubt Minecraft Online has an agreement in place to even use the name “Minecraft”, so I’m pretty sure they can be nuked via cease and desist at basically any point by Mojang for any reason…
something else I’ve realized since the previous comment:
i read in a different comment that apparently Minecraft servers authenticate against Mojang’s server at login/join to a server…that seemed really weird to me, since i know for a fact all of my servers run just fine without any internet at all!
…then i remembered that i exclusively play heavily modded (neo-)forge packs, and forge comes with it’s own server binaries, so i guess that’s why I don’t have to worry about authentication much!
(the user profile/MS account is cached in the launcher, so i do have an official account, it just doesn’t need to authenticate at every login and certainly not when joining a server. don’t know if that ever runs into a timeout though…maybe it does need a connection to mojangs servers every X days or something? dunno…)